


Miss This

by glittercyborgprincess



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 12:10:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13613085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glittercyborgprincess/pseuds/glittercyborgprincess
Summary: Spoilers for the Newest Ep (What was it called?).It's been three weeks and Noah wants to know where Uncle Rafa is. The answer seems to be more complicated than anticipated.





	Miss This

“Where's Uncle Rafa?” 

It had been three weeks but just hearing his name made her flinch. She tried not to think about it much. At least there was a chance to say goodbye, unlike Stabler (though she's glad she can now think of that man without even stuttering). “He's....away.”

“Oh.” He paused for a moment before picking up the next piece for his creation. “Is he with Grandma?” Noah never even looked up as he asked the questions, his attention instead focused on building the Lego spaceship at hand. 

“No, no, he's not with Grandma. He's just... away.” Her heart raced. Rafa was close to ending up in that same fate: rotting in a prison cell. She could have prevented all of this, she thought, gripping the TV remote tightly. He told her about his dad and his guilt and.... And she still called him. Because she trusted him to be human enough to care (and cared, he did, way too much). 

Noah looked up, his eyes wide. “Is he dead?” His voice trembled and the table shook with his hands. “I don't want Uncle Rafa to be dead!” 

Olivia shook her head, her lips curling into a wry smile as she reached over to tousle her son's hair. “Rafa is not--”

There was a knock at the door, stopping her short. 

“I'll get it!” Noah shot up and pulled away from her, running full speed toward the door. 

It only took her a moment to realize what was happening before she rushed up to catch him. Doors equal possible strangers which means possible danger. “No you don't, little guy,” she laughed, swinging him up into her arms. “The door is my job.” As they closed the space leading to the door, her mind tried to scroll the possibilities. If it was work, there would have been a call. Anybody else.... There probably would have also been a call. Nobody really bothered her on her days off with Noah after the kidnapping. She carefully undid the locks on her door and swung it open. 

Air left her lungs and Noah wriggled out of her grasp. 

“Uncle Rafa!” 

The man at the door smiled and bent his knees to offer a one-armed hug to the boy. His other arm kept positioned behind his back. “Hey, Noah. Good to see you, Buddy.”

Noah squeezed Rafael’s legs tight. “You're not dead!” 

He looked up to Olivia, who could only offer a non-committal shrug. “I'm not dead!” he exclaimed back to Noah. 

“I'm really glad because then I wouldn't be able to show you this new Rocketship I'm building! Lemme show you, it's so cool and awesome and cool a--” Noah pulled on Rafael’s arm, but the man in question held steady. 

He looked down at Noah. “I promise I'll stay to see your rocketship...but can I talk to your mom for a minute?” 

Noah only hesitated for a moment. “Okay! Sixty...fifty-nine...fifty-eight!” He began chanting the countdown as he sprinted back to the living room table. 

Rafael looked at Liv, startled. “Is he gonna hold me to that minute?” 

Olivia smiled. “Nah, he'll lose count somewhere around thirty and forty.”

“Ah, good.”

And they stood that way, as Noah chanted down to forty-three. Not because they wanted to see when he lost count. Instead, they stared at each other in an unfamiliar silence. Normally they could gab and banter the minute they were together. But it seems they lost that in the last three weeks. 

“So I died?”

“What are you--”

They speak in tandem, blurring out the first things that came to mind. They laughed, their cheeks heating with the awkwardness of it all. They were grown adults, dammit, not teenagers on a first date. Not that this was a date, Olivia amended quickly in her mind. 

“That was Noah's latest idea when he was trying to figure out why you haven't been around lately,” Liv explained, the words fumbling in her mouth. This, for some reason, felt so wrong to be talking like this. 

Rafael nodded, as if Noah's reasoning made any sort of sense. Of course, it didn't. He was five. 

The silence would have continued, but Rafael fought the urge, instead choosing to pull his hidden hand away from his back. “I wanted... To bring you these.” 

Olivia blinked, looking at the mixed bouquet of a dozen different flower types that Rafael thrust out at her. “What are... What are these?”

“Well I... I asked the florist. This is for thank you. This is for sorry. This is for please don't be mad. This is for friendship. This is for I miss you. And...” He stopped, hand freezing over the single red rose nestled into the center of the bouquet. Flinching away, he looked to the floor. “Turns out studying law for all of my life makes me pretty damn useless in the work force. I ended up right back in law after three weeks of searching for a non-law related job.” 

Olivia couldn't take her eyes off the rose. She nodded, not really paying attention. “Really?”

“I'm working as a pro-Bono legal advisor for Planned Parenthood.” 

Now she was paying attention. “Really? Rafa, that's amazing!” She tore her eyes from the rose and looked back to Rafael, whose eyes were still glued to the floor. Finally... Unable to handle the awkwardness that has sprouted between them, Olivia stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. “I'm so proud of you.”

He relaxed in her arms, wrapping his own arms around her and pressing the flowers into her back. “Really?” He mumbled into her shoulder. 

Olivia laughed, nodding against Rafael’s head. “Rafa, I would be proud of you if you ended up at Starbucks.”

“I tried, they wouldn't hire me.”

She erupt into a contagious laughter, and Rafael pulled back from her arms to join her. The only image they could think of was of him, in a court suit, with the iconic green apron. It was wildly unbelievable for both of them.

As they settled down, Liv pulled Rafael closer, into the apartment and shut the door behind him. “See, I miss this,” she said as she led him into the living room. “I miss you being around and I miss your jokes.” 

Rafael allowed himself to be pushed into the couch as Liv took the flowers from him. “I'm not joking.” 

She smiled, “I know. I'm sure it was the first place you applied, actually.” Rafael smiled back. “I'm gonna put these in some water.” 

He barely nodded before Noah leaped into his lap, his voice jumping with excitement. “Uncle Rafa, you have to see my spaceship!”

Rafael laughed, allowing himself to be pulled into the child's game. “Spaceship, I thought it was a rocketship?” 

Noah rolled his eyes, pulling the older man down to the floor. “They're the same thing,” giving Rafael a look at screamed ‘duh.’ Barba held in a laugh but luckily Noah didn't notice. Instead, his attention was pulled back to the colorful building bricks on the table. “These right here, these are the space cannons, they can shoot the bad guys out of the sky from a trillion miles away! And these! These are the reflective shields! They're for the space people to see themselves to make sure they look okay in their space suits and so they don't die. And this is the siren which is...... “

Nodding along to Noah's intricate explanations, Rafael looked up to see Olivia in the Kitchen holding the red rose in her hands. The other flowers had already been arranged in a vase. But she kept the rose separate. As if she was frustrated by its existence. He swallowed his pride and called over to her. “You can throw that one away if you don't like it.”

Olivia flinched, guilty that she had been caught red handed. She looked between Rafael and the red rose in her hand. It's been a long time since she had been given one. But she knew what it meant. Any person who ever paid attention to the world of flowers knew what they meant. She brought it to her nose, taking in the sweet scent. 

“No, you've got it all wrong.. I love it.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a naturally shitty person who sometimes likes to impulse write. I almost wrote Stabler back with him at the door instead of Rafa. I hated myself for even contemplating it.
> 
> This almost seems too long and unwieldy. I apologize.


End file.
